Funding for the arts - or the lack of it – is a topic which comes up quite often in the media. But the way it’s discussed often rests on all sorts of questionable assumptions. As part of his preparation for a long-planned book, pianist Will Hancox took a characteristically broad view of the subject, focussing on music, but looked across history at the many ways in which culture has been paid for, from the Troubadors to the Arts Council, what that tells us about different societies and the impacts of different funding models on music itself. And if that sounds a bit dry, as at his recent talk for the Ashridge Circle showed, there were lots of laughter along the way.